Evaluation of the perceptions and attitudes of medical teachers toward online teaching: A cross-sectional study

Background: During coronavirus disease-19 pandemic, medical teachers used online teaching as it was the only teaching platform available due to the lockdown imposed by the government of India. Many teachers had trouble while using this teaching method as they were exposed to it for the 1st time due to the lockdown. There are very few studies reporting perception and attitude of medical teachers toward online teaching in India. Hence, this study was planned. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate the perception and attitudes of medical teachers toward online teaching and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of using e-platforms for teaching. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire-based study. Participants were invited through email and online questionnaires were distributed as Google form through e-mail. Outcome measures presented as proportion and percentage. Results: A total of 100 medical teachers participated in this study. Less than half participants perceived online teaching effective (45%). We observed that (61%) of medical teachers found remote online teaching learning to be more advantageous than the traditional method. The challenges faced in online teaching learning were lack of physical contact (99%), time-consuming (61%), and difficult to manage time (58%) and adapt (71%), also 76% reported a lack of self-motivation. After a few sessions of online teaching, challenges such as time management, adaptation to new teaching technology, and lack of self-motivation were found to be less problematic. We found that zoom was the most preferred e-platform tool for online teaching (78%). Conclusion: Online teaching cannot replace traditional classroom teaching, and in the future, we can think about blended teaching learning platforms.